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Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197555780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 122
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Book Description
Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella-- astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields "pseudo" is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from genuine science. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements--both of which display allegations of "pseudoscience" on all sides-- there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. On the Fringe explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation. This book argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to science, we can learn a great deal about how science operated in the past and does today. This exploration raises several questions: How does a doctrine become demonized as pseudoscientific? Who has the authority to make these pronouncements? How is the status of science shaped by political or cultural contexts? How does pseudoscience differ from scientific fraud? Michael D. Gordin both answers these questions and guides readers along a bewildering array of marginalized doctrines, looking at parapsychology (ESP), Lysenkoism, scientific racism, and alchemy, among others, to better understand the struggle to define what science is and is not, and how the controversies have shifted over the centuries. On the Fringe provides a historical tour through many of these fringe fields in order to provide tools to think deeply about scientific controversies both in the past and in our present.
Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197555780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 122
Get Book
Book Description
Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella-- astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields "pseudo" is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from genuine science. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements--both of which display allegations of "pseudoscience" on all sides-- there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. On the Fringe explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation. This book argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to science, we can learn a great deal about how science operated in the past and does today. This exploration raises several questions: How does a doctrine become demonized as pseudoscientific? Who has the authority to make these pronouncements? How is the status of science shaped by political or cultural contexts? How does pseudoscience differ from scientific fraud? Michael D. Gordin both answers these questions and guides readers along a bewildering array of marginalized doctrines, looking at parapsychology (ESP), Lysenkoism, scientific racism, and alchemy, among others, to better understand the struggle to define what science is and is not, and how the controversies have shifted over the centuries. On the Fringe provides a historical tour through many of these fringe fields in order to provide tools to think deeply about scientific controversies both in the past and in our present.
Author: Margaret Wertheim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802778739
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of "outsider physicists," many without formal training and all convinced that they have found true alternative theories of the universe. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard,-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms. Captivated by the imaginative power of his theories and his resolutely DIY attitude, Wertheim has been following Carter's progress for the past decade. Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.
Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197555764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
"Pseudoscience is not a real thing. The term is a negative category, always ascribed to somebody else's beliefs, not to characterize a doctrine one holds dear oneself. People who espouse fringe ideas never think of themselves as "pseudoscientists"; they think they are following the correct scientific doctrine, even if it is not mainstream. In that sense, there is no such thing as pseudoscience, just disagreements about what the right science is. This is a familiar phenomenon. No believer ever thinks she is a "heretic," for example, or an artist that he produces "bad art." Those are attacks presented by opponents. Yet pseudoscience is also real. The term of abuse is used quite frequently, sometimes even about ideas that are at the core of the scientific mainstream, and those labels have consequences. If the reputation of "pseudoscience" solidifies, then it is very hard for a doctrine to shed the bad reputation. The outcome is plenty of scorn and no legitimacy (or funding) to investigate one's theories. In this, "pseudoscience" is a lot like "heresy": if the label sticks, persecution follows"--
Author: Kevin R. Grazier
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1935618687
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
More than 7 million viewers are captivated weekly by Fringe, a science fiction procedural in the best tradition of The X-Files with a taut central mythology, rich characters, and it's own laboratory cow. In its weekly cases and its overarching plot, Fringe strikes a compelling balance between the strange and the familiar, and the quirky and the tragic. Fringe Science delves into the science, science fiction, and pseudoscience of Fringe with a collection of essays by science and science fiction writers on everything from alternate universes to time travel to genetically targeted toxins, as well as discussions on the show's moral philosophy and the consequences of playing God.
Author: Tanya R. Cochran
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786475676
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
With diverse contributions from scholars in English literature, psychology, and film and television studies, this collection of essays contextualizes Fringe as a postmodern investigation into what makes us human and as an examination of how technology transforms our humanity. In compiling this collection, the editors sought material as multifaceted as the series itself, devoting sections to specific areas of interest explored by both the writers of Fringe and the writers of the essays: humanity, duality, genre and viewership.
Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226304434
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
Properly analyzed, the collective mythological and religious writings of humanity reveal that around 1500 BC, a comet swept perilously close to Earth, triggering widespread natural disasters and threatening the destruction of all life before settling into solar orbit as Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor. Sound implausible? Well, from 1950 until the late 1970s, a huge number of people begged to differ, as they devoured Immanuel Velikovsky’s major best-seller, Worlds in Collision, insisting that perhaps this polymathic thinker held the key to a new science and a new history. Scientists, on the other hand, assaulted Velikovsky’s book, his followers, and his press mercilessly from the get-go. In The Pseudoscience Wars, Michael D. Gordin resurrects the largely forgotten figure of Velikovsky and uses his strange career and surprisingly influential writings to explore the changing definitions of the line that separates legitimate scientific inquiry from what is deemed bunk, and to show how vital this question remains to us today. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material from Velikovsky’s personal archives, Gordin presents a behind-the-scenes history of the writer’s career, from his initial burst of success through his growing influence on the counterculture, heated public battles with such luminaries as Carl Sagan, and eventual eclipse. Along the way, he offers fascinating glimpses into the histories and effects of other fringe doctrines, including creationism, Lysenkoism, parapsychology, and more—all of which have surprising connections to Velikovsky’s theories. Science today is hardly universally secure, and scientists seem themselves beset by critics, denialists, and those they label “pseudoscientists”—as seen all too clearly in battles over evolution and climate change. The Pseudoscience Wars simultaneously reveals the surprising Cold War roots of our contemporary dilemma and points readers to a different approach to drawing the line between knowledge and nonsense.
Author: Tom Waidzunas
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452945527
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
To be taken seriously, therapies that claim to “cure” homosexuality wrap themselves in lab coats. Even though the fit is bad, and such therapies and their theorists now inhabit the scientific fringe, the science of sexuality has made some adjustments, too, Tom Waidzunas tells us in this provocative work. Intervening in the politics of sexuality and science, The Straight Line argues that scientific definitions of sexual orientation do not merely reflect the results of investigations into human nature, but rather emerge through a process of social negotiation between opposing groups. The demedicalization of homosexuality and the discrediting of reparative therapies, ex-gay ministries, and reorientation research have, Waidzunas contends, required scientists to enforce key boundaries around scientific expertise and research methods. Drawing on extensive participant observation at conferences for ex-gays, reorientation therapists, mainstream psychologists, and survivors of ex-gay therapy, as well as interviews with experts and activists, The Straight Line traces reorientation debates in the United States from the 1950s to the present, following homosexuality therapies from the mainstream to the margins. As the ex-gay movement has become increasingly transnational in recent years, Waidzunas turns to Uganda, where ideas about the scientific nature of homosexuality influenced the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014. While most studies treat the ex-gay movement as a religious phenomenon, this book looks at how the movement, in its attempts to establish legitimacy, has engaged with scientific institutions, shaping virulent anti-gay public policy.
Author: Michael W Friedlander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429970714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Scientific discoveries are constantly in the news. Almost daily we hear about new and important breakthroughs. But sometimes it turns out that what was trumpeted as scientific truth is later discredited, or controversy may long swirl about some dramatic claim. What is a nonscientist to believe? Many books debunk pseudoscience, and some others present only the scientific consensus on any given issue. In At the Fringes of Science Michael Friedlander offers a careful look at the shadowlands of science. What makes Friedlander's book especially useful is that he reviews conventional scientific method and shows how scientists examine the hard cases to determine what is science and what is pseudoscience. Emphasizing that there is no clear line of demarcation between science and nonscience, Friedlander leads the reader through case after entertaining case, covering the favorites of "tabloid science" such as astrology and UFOs, scientific controversies such as cold fusion, and those maverick ideas that were at first rejected by science only to be embraced later. There are many good stories here, but there is also much learning and wisdom. Students of science and interested lay readers will come away from this book with an increased understanding of what science is, how it works, and how the nonscientist should deal with science at its fringes.
Author: Brenda Denzler
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520224329
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
A scholarly exploration of the "UFO movement" probes life on the fringes of modernity, tracing the fascinating links between science and religion implied by this philosophy.
Author: Christa Faust
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
ISBN: 1781163103
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Critically acclaimed Fringe explores new cases with endless impossibilities. Set in Boston, the FBI's Fringe Division started when Special Agent Olivia Dunham enlisted institutionalized "fringe" scientist Walter Bishop and his globe-trotting, jack-of-all-trades son, Peter, to help in investigations that defy all human logic - and the laws of nature. The first in an all-new series of tie-in novels!
